re: Issue https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/2685
re: PR https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/pull/2179
As noted in PR https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/pull/2179,
the old code did not allow for reclaiming instances of types,
nor for properly copying them. That PR provided new functions
capable of reclaiming/copying instances of arbitrary types.
However, as noted by Issue https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/2685, using these
most general functions resulted in a significant performance
degradation, even for common cases.
This PR attempts to mitigate the cost of using the general
reclaim/copy functions in two ways.
First, the previous functions operating at the top level by
using ncid and typeid arguments. These functions were augmented
with equivalent versions that used the netcdf-c library internal
data structures to allow direct access to needed information.
These new functions are used internally to the library.
The second mitigation involves optimizing the internal functions
by providing early tests for common cases. This avoids
unnecessary recursive function calls.
The overall result is a significant improvement in speed by a
factor of roughly twenty -- your mileage may vary. These
optimized functions are still not as fast as the original (more
limited) functions, but they are getting close. Additional optimizations are
possible. But the cost is a significant "uglification" of the
code that I deemed a step too far, at least for now.
## Misc. Changes
1. Added a test case to check the proper reclamation/copy of complex types.
2. Found and fixed some places where nc_reclaim/copy should have been used.
3. Replaced, in the netcdf-c library, (almost all) occurrences of nc_reclaim_copy with calls to NC_reclaim/copy. This plus the optimizations is the primary speed-up mechanism.
4. In DAP4, the metadata is held in a substrate in-memory file; this required some changes so that the reclaim/copy code accessed that substrate dispatcher rather than the DAP4 dispatcher.
5. Re-factored and isolated the code that computes if a type is (transitively) variable-sized or not.
6. Clean up the reclamation code in ncgen; adding the use of nc_reclaim exposed some memory problems.
## Improvements to S3 Documentation
* Create a new document *quickstart_paths.md* that give a summary of the legal path formats used by netcdf-c. This includes both file paths and URL paths.
* Modify *nczarr.md* to remove most of the S3 related text.
* Move the S3 text from *nczarr.md* to a new document *cloud.md*.
* Add some S3-related text to the *byterange.md* document.
Hopefully, this will make it easier for users to find the information they want.
## Rebuild NCZarr Testing
In order to avoid problems with running make check in parallel, two changes were made:
1. The *nczarr_test* test system was rebuilt. Now, for each test.
any generated files are kept in a test-specific directory, isolated
from all other test executions.
2. Similarly, since the S3 test bucket is shared, any generated S3 objects
are isolated using a test-specific key path.
## Other S3 Related Changes
* Add code to ensure that files created on S3 are reclaimed at end of testing.
* Used the bash "trap" command to ensure S3 cleanup even if the test fails.
* Cleanup the S3 related configure.ac flag set since S3 is used in several places. So now one should use the option *--enable-s3* instead of *--enable-nczarr-s3*, although the latter is still kept as a deprecated alias for the former.
* Get some of the github actions yml to work with S3; required fixing various test scripts adding a secret to access the Unidata S3 bucket.
* Cleanup S3 portion of libnetcdf.settings.in and netcdf_meta.h.in and test_common.in.
* Merge partial S3 support into dhttp.c.
* Create an experimental s3 access library especially for use with Windows. It is enabled by using the options *--enable-s3-internal* (automake) or *-DENABLE_S3_INTERNAL=ON* (CMake). Also add a unit-test for it.
* Move some definitions from ncrc.h to ncs3sdk.h
## Other Changes
* Provide a default implementation of strlcpy and move this and similar defaults into *dmissing.c*.
Warning: This PR is a follow on to PR https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/pull/2555 and should not be merged until that prior PR has been merged. The changeset for this PR is a delta on the PR https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/pull/2555.
This PR re-enables the use of the server *remotetest.unidata.ucar.edu/d4ts*
to test several features:
1. Show that access over the Internet to servers using the DAP4 protocol works.
2. Test that DAP4 support in the [Thredds Data Server](https://github.com/Unidata/tds) is operating correctly.
4. Test that the DAP4 support in the [netcdf-java library](https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-java) library and the DAP4 support in the netcdf-c library are consistent and are interoperable.
The test inputs (primarily *\*.nc* files) provided in the netcdf-c library
are also used by the DAP4 Test Server (aka d4ts) to present web access to a
collection of data files accessible via the DAP4 protocol and which can be
used for testing Internet access to a working server.
To be precise, this version of d4ts is currently in unmerged branches
of the *netcdf-java* and *tds* Github repositories and so are not actually
in the main repositories *yet*. However, the *d4ts.war* file was created
from that branch and used to populate the *remotetest.unidata.ucar.edu*
server
The two other remote servers that were used in the past are *Hyrax* (OPenDAP.org)
and *thredds-test*. These will continue to remain disabled until
those servers can be fixed.
## Primary Changes
* Rebuild the *baselineremote* directory. This directory contains the validation data needed to test the remote servers.
* Re-enable using remotetest.unidata.ucar.edu as part of the DAP4 testing process.
* Fix the *dap4_test/test_remote.sh* test script to match the current available test data.
* Make some changes to libdap4 to improve the ability to catch malformed data streams [affects a lot of files in libdap4].
## Misc. Unrelated Changes
* Remove a raft of warnings, especially in nc_test4/tst_quantize.c.
* Add some additional explanatory information to the NCZarr documentation.
* Cleanup some Doxygen errors in the docs file and reorder some files.
re: https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/541
re: https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/1208
re: https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/2078
re: https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/2041
re: https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/2143
For a long time, there have been known problems with the
management of complex types containing VLENs. This also
involves the string type because it is stored as a VLEN of
chars.
This PR (mostly) fixes this problem. But note that it adds new
functions to netcdf.h (see below) and this may require bumping
the .so number. These new functions can be removed, if desired,
in favor of functions in netcdf_aux.h, but netcdf.h seems the
better place for them because they are intended as alternatives
to the nc_free_vlen and nc_free_string functions already in
netcdf.h.
The term complex type refers to any type that directly or
transitively references a VLEN type. So an array of VLENS, a
compound with a VLEN field, and so on.
In order to properly handle instances of these complex types, it
is necessary to have function that can recursively walk
instances of such types to perform various actions on them. The
term "deep" is also used to mean recursive.
At the moment, the two operations needed by the netcdf library are:
* free'ing an instance of the complex type
* copying an instance of the complex type.
The current library does only shallow free and shallow copy of
complex types. This means that only the top level is properly
free'd or copied, but deep internal blocks in the instance are
not touched.
Note that the term "vector" will be used to mean a contiguous (in
memory) sequence of instances of some type. Given an array with,
say, dimensions 2 X 3 X 4, this will be stored in memory as a
vector of length 2*3*4=24 instances.
The use cases are primarily these.
## nc_get_vars
Suppose one is reading a vector of instances using nc_get_vars
(or nc_get_vara or nc_get_var, etc.). These functions will
return the vector in the top-level memory provided. All
interior blocks (form nested VLEN or strings) will have been
dynamically allocated.
After using this vector of instances, it is necessary to free
(aka reclaim) the dynamically allocated memory, otherwise a
memory leak occurs. So, the recursive reclaim function is used
to walk the returned instance vector and do a deep reclaim of
the data.
Currently functions are defined in netcdf.h that are supposed to
handle this: nc_free_vlen(), nc_free_vlens(), and
nc_free_string(). Unfortunately, these functions only do a
shallow free, so deeply nested instances are not properly
handled by them.
Note that internally, the provided data is immediately written so
there is no need to copy it. But the caller may need to reclaim the
data it passed into the function.
## nc_put_att
Suppose one is writing a vector of instances as the data of an attribute
using, say, nc_put_att.
Internally, the incoming attribute data must be copied and stored
so that changes/reclamation of the input data will not affect
the attribute.
Again, the code inside the netcdf library does only shallow copying
rather than deep copy. As a result, one sees effects such as described
in Github Issue https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/issues/2143.
Also, after defining the attribute, it may be necessary for the user
to free the data that was provided as input to nc_put_att().
## nc_get_att
Suppose one is reading a vector of instances as the data of an attribute
using, say, nc_get_att.
Internally, the existing attribute data must be copied and returned
to the caller, and the caller is responsible for reclaiming
the returned data.
Again, the code inside the netcdf library does only shallow copying
rather than deep copy. So this can lead to memory leaks and errors
because the deep data is shared between the library and the user.
# Solution
The solution is to build properly recursive reclaim and copy
functions and use those as needed.
These recursive functions are defined in libdispatch/dinstance.c
and their signatures are defined in include/netcdf.h.
For back compatibility, corresponding "ncaux_XXX" functions
are defined in include/netcdf_aux.h.
````
int nc_reclaim_data(int ncid, nc_type xtypeid, void* memory, size_t count);
int nc_reclaim_data_all(int ncid, nc_type xtypeid, void* memory, size_t count);
int nc_copy_data(int ncid, nc_type xtypeid, const void* memory, size_t count, void* copy);
int nc_copy_data_all(int ncid, nc_type xtypeid, const void* memory, size_t count, void** copyp);
````
There are two variants. The first two, nc_reclaim_data() and
nc_copy_data(), assume the top-level vector is managed by the
caller. For reclaim, this is so the user can use, for example, a
statically allocated vector. For copy, it assumes the user
provides the space into which the copy is stored.
The second two, nc_reclaim_data_all() and
nc_copy_data_all(), allows the functions to manage the
top-level. So for nc_reclaim_data_all, the top level is
assumed to be dynamically allocated and will be free'd by
nc_reclaim_data_all(). The nc_copy_data_all() function
will allocate the top level and return a pointer to it to the
user. The user can later pass that pointer to
nc_reclaim_data_all() to reclaim the instance(s).
# Internal Changes
The netcdf-c library internals are changed to use the proper
reclaim and copy functions. It turns out that the places where
these functions are needed is quite pervasive in the netcdf-c
library code. Using these functions also allows some
simplification of the code since the stdata and vldata fields of
NC_ATT_INFO are no longer needed. Currently this is commented
out using the SEPDATA \#define macro. When any bugs are largely
fixed, all this code will be removed.
# Known Bugs
1. There is still one known failure that has not been solved.
All the failures revolve around some variant of this .cdl file.
The proximate cause of failure is the use of a VLEN FillValue.
````
netcdf x {
types:
float(*) row_of_floats ;
dimensions:
m = 5 ;
variables:
row_of_floats ragged_array(m) ;
row_of_floats ragged_array:_FillValue = {-999} ;
data:
ragged_array = {10, 11, 12, 13, 14}, {20, 21, 22, 23}, {30, 31, 32},
{40, 41}, _ ;
}
````
When a solution is found, I will either add it to this PR or post a new PR.
# Related Changes
* Mark nc_free_vlen(s) as deprecated in favor of ncaux_reclaim_data.
* Remove the --enable-unfixed-memory-leaks option.
* Remove the NC_VLENS_NOTEST code that suppresses some vlen tests.
* Document this change in docs/internal.md
* Disable the tst_vlen_data test in ncdump/tst_nccopy4.sh.
* Mark types as fixed size or not (transitively) to optimize the reclaim
and copy functions.
# Misc. Changes
* Make Doxygen process libdispatch/daux.c
* Make sure the NC_ATT_INFO_T.container field is set.
stored in the _NCProperties attribute to allow two things:
1. capture of additional library dependencies (over and above
hdf5)
2. Recognition of non-netcdf libraries that create netcdf-4 format
files.
To this end, the _NCProperties format has been extended to be
and arbitrary set of key=value pairs separated by commas.
This new format has version = 2, and uses commas as the pair separator.
Thus the general form is:
_NCProperties = "version=2,key1=value,key2=value2..." ;
This new version is accompanied by a new ./configure option of the form
--with-ncproperties="key1=value1,key2=value2..."
that specifies pairs to add to the _NCProperties attribute for all
files created with that netcdf library.
At this point, what is missing is some programmatic way to
specify either all the pairs or additional pairs
to the _NCProperties attribute. Not sure of the best way
to do this.
Builders using non-netcdf libraries can specify
whatever they want in the key value pairs (as long
as the version=2 is specified first).
By convention, the primary library is expected to be the
the first pair after the leading version=2 pair, but this
is convention only and is neither required nor enforced.
Related changes:
1. Fixed the tests that check _NCProperties to properly operate with version=2.
2. When reading a version 1 _NCProperties attribute, convert it to look
like a version 2 attribute.
2. Added some version 2 tests to ncdump/tst_fileinfo.c and
ncdump/tst_fileinfo.sh
Misc Changes:
1. Fix minor problem in ncdap_test/testurl.sh where a parameter to
buildurl needed to be quoted.
2. Minor fix to ncgen to swap switches -H and -h to be consistent
with other utilities.
3. Document the -M flag in nccopy usage() and the nccopy man page.
4. Modify a test case to use the nccopy -M flag.
The file docs/indexing.dox tries to provide design
information for the refactoring.
The primary change is to replace all walking of linked
lists with the use of the NCindex data structure.
Ncindex is a combination of a hash table (for name-based
lookup) and a vector (for walking the elements in the index).
Additionally, global vectors are added to NC_HDF5_FILE_INFO_T
to support direct mapping of an e.g. dimid to the NC_DIM_INFO_T
object. These global vectors exist for dimensions, types, and groups
because they have globally unique id numbers.
WARNING:
1. since libsrc4 and libsrchdf4 share code, there are also
changes in libsrchdf4.
2. Any outstanding pull requests that change libsrc4 or libhdf4
are likely to cause conflicts with this code.
3. The original reason for doing this was for performance improvements,
but as noted elsewhere, this may not be significant because
the meta-data read performance apparently is being dominated
by the hdf5 library because we do bulk meta-data reading rather
than lazy reading.
Modified provenance code to allocate the minimal space
needed for _NCProperties attribute in file. Basically
required using malloc in the provenance code and in ncdump.
Otherwise should cause no externally visible effects.
Also removed the ENABLE_FILEINFO from configure.ac since
the provenance code is no longer optional.
re: github netcdf-c issue #271
This occurs for several reasons, including:
1. using H5Aopen_name instead of H5Aexists to test if attribute exists.
2. using H5Eset_auto instead of H5Eset_auto2.
There are probably others that will have to be extinguished as encountered.
p.s Hope I did not overdo this and kill too much.
Charlie Zender noted that we forgot to define what happens for
various netcdf API attribute operations, notably nc_inq_att()
and nc_get_att().
So, I added a list of legal and illegal api calls for the provenance
attributes in docs/attribute_conventions.md.
I also added more test cases to ncdump/tst_fileinfo.c to verify
and fixed resultant errors.
This consists of a persistent attribute named
_NCProperties plus two computed attributes
_IsNetcdf4 and _SuperblockVersion.
See the 'Provenance Attributes' section
of docs/attribute_conventions.md for details.
